1970 Ford Torino - Rare And Restored

There's a lot to like about Mike Nagel's Torino—from the Ram-Air shaker scoop on its 429 Cobra Jet engine to the perfectly restored interior—but the thing that stood out most to us was its stunning black paintjob. “I've got at least 400 hours in on the paint and body,” Mike says. He's a former painter/autobody technician, so he knows what he's doing. But he built this car at home, spraying the paint in one of those add-on garages usually reserved for parking your lawn tractor. Impressive, huh? We thought so, too. So much, in fact, that we handed Mike the Best Ford award at last year's Car Craft Summer Nationals.

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Mike is the third owner of this car. He bought it mainly because he's owned several Mustangs and wanted something different. He found it for sale on www.classiccars.com, hitched his trailer, and drove to Southern Illinois to buy it. It had been sitting for several years in the second owner's barn, so it was filthy—but rust-free.

Upon returning home, he rebuilt the braking system. He also removed the engine and transmission for a thorough cleaning and rebuild, returning them to OE specs because they were original to the car.

The following year, he stripped the paint because, “I got tired of looking at the wavy body panels.” Mike later acknowledged that the waviness was due to a few door dings that infested the car's flanks, leading us to believe he's pretty picky about his car's appearance. There's nothing wrong with that, either.

Mike soon had the Torino taken apart and stripped to bare metal, scraping the paint with a razor blade instead of using a chemical stripper. Torino parts are very hard to find, and they cost a fortune when you do come across them, so Mike basically had to metal-finish all the original panels back to factory fresh. Once done, he primed and block-sanded everything, then primed and blocksanded two more times until the sheetmetal looked better than new. He painted it in pieces in his makeshift paint booth because the whole car couldn't fit with the hood and fenders installed.

6/11

One might think Mike would now be terrified to take the car out in public, but that's not the case. He drives it to local cruise nights, estimating that he puts about 1,000 miles on it during the summer. He's just very careful where he parks it.

7/11

Tech NotesWho: Mike NagelWhat: 1970 Ford TorinoWhere: River Falls, WI

Engine: The numbers-matching 429 Cobra Jet engine was intact but needed to be freshened up. Mike removed it and treated it to a complete factory-spec rebuild. A previous owner had installed a bigger cam, so Mike replaced it with a Comp grind that matched the original lift and duration numbers. From the factory, Cobra Jet 429's had 11.3:1 compression and were rated at 370 hp. Mike's car came with the RamAir hood shaker scoop, one step up from the standard Cobra Jet engine. Things like brackets and pulleys were all in place, so he didn't have to go scrounging for those, but he did have to do some searching to find the A/C fittings that demanded to be replaced.

Intake and Carb: Interestingly, '70 and '71 Cobra Jet engines came with Rochester Quadrajet carburetors on spreadbore intake manifolds. Mike tells us original parts are nearly impossible to find, with rebuildable cores running about $1,000. He sent his to Sparky's Carb Service for a rebuild, then wrapped it up in a box with the intake manifold. “They're almost too valuable to run on the car!” he says. In their place, he's got a Super Cobra Jet intake manifold and a Holley 780-cfm carburetor.

Exhaust: Stock manifolds direct the exhaust into a 21⁄2-inch exhaust system with MagnaFlow mufflers.

Transmission: The transmission also matches the car's VIN. It needed a mild freshening before rejoining the engine. The rear axle is a 9-inch with a nodular iron center section and 3.50:1 gears on a Detroit Locker differential.

Paint/Body: Sight down the side of the car, and you'll see that Mike's keen attention to detail resulted in a flawless paint job—at least we could find no faults with it. The body lines are razor sharp, and the paint looks as deep and dark as the night sky. Knowing what it takes to make big cars look good, we have no reason to doubt Mike's claim of 400 man hours in the body work and paint job alone. The strip of flat black on the hood is SEM Hot Rod Black, and he used PPG's basecoat/clearcoat on the rest of the body.

Interior: Mike treated the interior to the same careful restoration the exterior received. The seats were reupholstered by Premier in Rogers, MN, and Mike added new carpet and re-wired the car.

Brakes/Wheels/Tires: The stock disc/drums are behind the cool-looking, original Magnum 500 wheels. Those are 235/60R15 Mickey Thompson tires mounted to them.